Beauty and the Manwhore
by FishNet
Summary: PostDesire. After giving up on Addison, Mark meets a woman in a bar. But can he change his manwhoring ways, and is he really over Addison?
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: If Grey's Anatomy belonged to me then I wouldn't have to write fanfiction about it, I'd just make this stuff happen on the show. The story begins after the events in "Desire."

Being a grown-up sucked ass. Mark Sloan slugged back a shot of whiskey in irritation and tried to block out the mental image of Addison's sex hair. It was no use. The sex hair was permanently etched into his retinas.

He was still ever so slightly shocked that he'd taken Grey's advice and sucked it up about Addison. He hadn't called her out on it, and he hadn't even broken his pact. She thought he had, though, and thus the pact had dissolved itself so there was no reason why he couldn't console himself with some fine young thing now. However, once he was actually in the bar, the only woman he had eyes for was shimmering in a shot glass.

He signaled for another, leaning heavily on the bar and feeling ever so slightly off balance on his bar stool. How many had he had now? He hadn't been paying close enough attention.

"I hope you have someone to scrape you off the floor later, if you're going to keep this pace up," a saucy voice said from beside him. He turned on his stool.

She was sipping what he assumed was a rum and coke and looking very amused at his behavior. His man-whore smile found his lips easily, happy to be useful again, and he replied, "Maybe you could do it."

"I've never liked cleaning up drunks," she said acerbically.

Another shot appeared before him, but he only glanced at it this time. She was a tiny woman, slim and, he guessed, short, although it was difficult to tell with her seated on the bar stool. She was wearing very tall, very black stiletto heels as well. She had on a pale blue blouse and a pinstriped black pencil skirt, but no panty hose. She didn't need panty hose; she had fantastic legs.

Here, thought Mark lustily, was his retribution.

"Mark Sloan," he said, extending his hand. She slipped hers into it gracefully, small and soft.

"Perrin Rhodes."

"Interesting name," he said, flashing a little teeth.

"Thank you." Mark was slightly befuddled. She seemed immune to the man-whore charm. He would just have to turn it up.

"Are you going to drink that or just keep it around so you've got something to do with your hands?" she asked as he was considering how best to get her out of the pencil skirt and into his hotel room. He looked down and realized he had been absentmindedly swiveling the shot glass in his fingers.

With a suave half-smile he lifted the glass to his lips and swallowed the liquor in one fast gulp, feeling very manly about it. Perrin laughed under her breath.

"What about yours?" he asked, nodding at the glass in front of her.

"I'm in no hurry," she replied, taking a small sip of it.

"Trying not to get too smashed, so no one will scrape _you_ off of the floor?"

"I won't get smashed at all; it's just a coke," she told him with a smile, uncrossing and recrossing her legs. Mark watched this action lustily.

"So you don't like cleaning up drunken men, and you're not getting trashed or even buzzed," he summed up. "What on earth are you doing here?"

"I came with a colleague who wanted to try and pick up doctors," she told him.

"Well you've come to the right place for that."

"Apparently. She left a little while ago with a gynecologist. He seemed to be giving her a free exam. It was very sweet of him, really."

She was very sarcastic. Mark liked that. "Are you looking for an exam, too?" he asked.

"Are you a gynecologist?"

"No. I'm a surgeon." It was clear that he thought this was much, much more impressive than a gynecologist.

"Good, I've never much enjoyed gynecologists. And I think I'll pass on the exam."

"Are you sure? I've got very talented surgical hands," he told her. "Good at many things."

"You're certainly forward," she said, rolling her eyes ever so slightly and taking a sip of her drink.

"You instigated the conversation."

"I'm forward, too, then," she agreed. "Although I think my motives were slightly different."

"You started a conversation with a random, ruggedly handsome man in a bar and your motives are different than mine," he said incredulously.

She laughed. "Ruggedly handsome? You certainly have a high opinion of yourself." With that, she swiped up her glass and downed the rest of her drink in one fluid motion. Mark had to admit he was rather impressed by it. She stood, sliding her purse up her shoulder. "I should get going. Work tomorrow and all of that."

"Let me walk you to your car." He stood as well, still a good deal taller than her even though she was wearing the heels.

"Alright," she agreed, the corners of her lips twitching. No matter what she said about her motives, he thought, she was definitely pleased.

"Do you live near here?" he asked as he held the door open for her. It was mostly an excuse to stare at her ass in that pencil skirt as she walked out in front of him.

"About fifteen minutes away. And you?"

He told her he was staying at the hotel, following her towards her car. She paused in front of the driver's side door. "Goodnight, Mark," she said with a sly smile.

He bent down and kissed her, pressing her against the car door and sliding his hands along her waist. She put her hands against his chest, her fingertips pressing through the fabric of his shirt. Addison's sex hair had finally gotten out of his head—now he was picturing Perrin's legs around his waist, those stilettos still on her feet.

"Come back to my hotel with me," he said, leaning away from her slightly but leaving his hands on her hips. "Tuck me into bed."

"I'm not a one night stand kind of girl," she said, surprising him.

"Who said anything about a one night stand?" he countered quickly.

She laughed. "Please. You know perfectly well that's what you were expecting. You're that guy, Mark."

It was perfectly true, but he wasn't about to admit it. "It wouldn't just be a one night stand," he said, kissing her neck. She didn't seem to be buying it. "I promise."

She rolled her eyes and pushed him back gently. "Even so, I don't sleep with men I've just met."

"You're killing me here."

She looked contemplative. "I think you're full of it, but if you're really interested then you can call me." She pulled a black sharpie marker from her purse and wrote her phone number on the palm of his hand. He stared at it, slightly shocked by this turn of events. She had definitely kissed him back. She thought he was attractive—not that he'd ever had any doubt about that. But the man whore charm had failed. She was not coming back to the hotel with him.

She leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. "Don't worry, I'm not actually expecting you to follow through," she told him, opening her car door and sliding into the seat. "Goodnight, Mark. Make sure no one has to scrape you off of the floor."

And with that, she shut the door and drove away. Mark looked down at the phone number on his palm for a moment and then turned back to the bar. He was man-whoring again; he had no interest in dating some girl who wouldn't sleep with him. He'd just have a couple more shots and pick up someone else.


	2. Chapter 2

Mark opened his eyes, thought better of it, and closed them again, swatting angrily at the buzzing alarm clock on his night stand. He was massively hung-over. Hung-over didn't even begin to describe it, in fact. It was as if a row of tiny jack hammers were working in his head.

He rolled over onto his back, sprawling his arms to either side. The bed was empty save for him, and he wondered for a moment if someone else had vacated it already. But no, there was no evidence of sex, and he vaguely remembered stumbling home and passing out alone.

He cracked his eyelids and looked up at the ceiling in misery. He'd had every intention of scoring last night, but he couldn't remember so much as smiling at a woman. He'd take a shot, decide to order just one more before he moved on to the man-whoring part of the evening, and then the cycle would repeat. He hadn't been so utterly trashed in ages—not since Addison had gotten rid of the baby and left.

He had to go to work, so he dragged his body from the bed feeling as if he weighed about a hundred pounds more than usual. He only wanted two things: coffee and a shower. Hopefully one or the other would help to alleviate his splitting headache. If not, one of the great things about being a doctor was the easy access to excellent painkillers.

He made a cup of coffee quickly with his hotel room hot pot and then slumped back to the bathroom for the shower. He turned on the water and leaned against the counter for a moment, resting his forehead against the cool glass of the mirror. He opened his eyes and noted his haggard expression. There was a strange black smudge across his cheek, and he reached up and touched it in confusion.

The reflection of his hand made it clear. There on his palm was a smudged but still legible phone number and name, "Perrin." The girl who wouldn't screw him.

He stared at his palm for a moment remembering. She had been hot, and she had flirted with him and then refused to come back to the hotel with him even when he tried to bait her with the promise of meaningful sex. Perhaps he wasn't as good of a liar as he had thought. Or maybe, he thought, remembering his empty bed, his man-whore abilities were waning. Could they have faded with disuse? He'd turned them on a little to help out the Chief that night (although Richard didn't seem to have appreciated his efforts very much) but other than that he'd been doing the celibate thing for Addison. Was it possible that he had lost his powers?

This was unsettling, and he felt like he would want to think about it more after he had his shower, when his mind would be clearer. Somehow having the phone number seemed relevant to deciphering this problem, and so he wrote it down on a cocktail napkin before he stepped under the cold stream of water pouring from the showerhead.

He stepped out ten minutes later, hangover ebbing slightly, and got dressed. The cocktail napkin was taunting him from the top of his nightstand. He really didn't get it; he knew he was hot. Hell, the interns had given him a sexy nickname, so it wasn't all just in his head. And yet, here he was without so much as a forgotten pair of panties sticking out from under the bed.

Addison was in the locker room when he arrived at Seattle Grace, and she looked at him with a mixture of disappointment and what he presumed was hatred. Slamming her locker, she whisked out in her salmon colored scrubs. Mark wondered how long he would have to tolerate this. No wonder he never took the freaking high road; _she'd_ done something wrong and _he_ got punished.

He couldn't even torture Karev, since the intern was on gynie squad, as usual. Life really wasn't fair. No tail and no justice: despite his best efforts, he was still the hospital's evil man-whore. The one person who did get it, Grey, wasn't even really his friend since that would probably lead Derek to beating him again and, truth be told, he did usually end up hitting on her, which pissed her off.

He was glad to get into surgery and get his mind off of Addison, Karev and the damn cocktail napkin which had become a symbol for all that was missing from his sex life. Surgery he was good at; surgery he understood. Women he was no longer so sure about. He had the perfect amount of stubble, dammit, she should've been begging for it.

It was a long shift, and he finally got back at around six the next morning, running off about a ten minute doze in the on-call room. Although he'd had his share of trysts on hospital grounds, after watching Addison and Karev stumble out he'd had a much more difficult time relaxing there than previously. He felt wiped-out and began pulling off his clothes the moment he stepped through the door.

He had nearly gotten the cocktail napkin off of his mind what with the lovely extensive surgeries, but there it was waiting for him before he could collapse onto his bed. The maid had arranged it neatly on his nightstand. He picked it up and looked at it lying in the palm of his hand. Perrin Rhodes had refused sex, but she had given him her phone number, so that must've meant something.

It was no wonder he was confused, he thought, after being at Seattle Grace. There wasn't a single person there who wasn't sexually frustrated on some level. He didn't often meet with women outside of the workplace except for those who wanted hookups. But miraculously he'd ended up next to a girl who was there as the female equivalent of a wingman and who was more choosy about who she screwed. It had nothing to do with his own hotness levels; those were still secure. He'd simply stumbled upon a woman with some sexual scruples. How odd.

And, he thought as he remembered their conversation, she had issued a challenge. She recognized the man-whore tendencies and didn't think he'd take her on an actual date. Well, if there was one thing Mark Sloan loved it was a challenge. Maybe he couldn't tell anyone at the hospital that they were wrong about he and Addison—with those gossips it would get back to her, and that wasn't very high-road-like—but he could damn well prove Perrin Rhodes wrong.

He crashed down onto the bed, nude and thankful for the cleaning service at the hotel that supplied him with crisp, clean sheets everyday. He had the day off; when he woke up, he'd set to making Perrin feel badly for making assumptions about him. It was a delicious thought.


End file.
